


A Tale of Waves and Sky

by Tethys_resort



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Boats and Ships, Disasters, Family, Fishing, Friendship, Gen, Ghost Stories, Near Death Experiences, Near Drownings, POV First Person, Second Age, Shipwrecks, Survival, time of wandering, tsunami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27918604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tethys_resort/pseuds/Tethys_resort
Summary: The Sea, Second Age 3319.  Or, long ago, in the Time of Wandering.
Relationships: original characters (hobbit)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7
Collections: Festival of Lights Fest





	A Tale of Waves and Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: tsunami, maritime disasters, near drownings

“Long, long ago. And far, far away.” That’s how all the stories of Big Folk begin around here. 

Or, as the Big Folk on the far edge of the world over the Sea say, “Mukashi, mukashi.”

The Folk under the Mountains, the Dwarves, seem to always start with, “In the time when Durin walked alone.”

I remember that the Folk of the Plains and the Folk of the Lakes, the Elves here would call them the Avari, always said, “In the time before. Before the Sun, and before the Moon.”

I think the Elves here, the Noldor here on this side of the mountains say, “Once upon a time, faraway in Valinor.”

We, the Hobbits, the Little Folk, start our stories with, “Long ago, in the Time of Wandering.”

The Time of Wandering… Do you ever wonder what came before the Wandering? Or do you assume that we were always the Wanderers, only the ones who made the Journey? Because I assure you there was a time before the Journey. Before the Crossing of the mountains into these plains and hills. Before we settled along the Baraduin and took the land here into our hearts. 

I don’t know if our folk were always the Wanderers. I was not alive when the Wandering began. I died long before it ended.

We were Wanderers though. We had traveled far from the Anduin.

We were the folk of the boats. We lived in the thousands of islands just off the coast, traveling a long circuit through the warm shallow waters. 

Maybe a different type of Wandering than you expected? 

Long ago, in the Time of Wandering….

My cousin Nettle’s mentor told her they would need more of the delicate purple cone flowers, foxflowers, for Great-grandfather’s medicine. I offered to go along and help her gather, with the excuse that it would free up another adult to help with the catch. It was shadow fish season and everyone was busy drying the catch on great strings across the decks. 

I was eager to be out for a week or so: drying shadow fish are oily and smelly.

We almost made it to the little skiff we were going to sail before Nettle’s youngest brother, Thorn, was racing to catch up. His feet thudded down the deck, sure footed as any Hobbit child born to the Sea and the Boats. He yelled, “Nettle, Poppy, can I come too?”

Nettle growled, I think she was looking forward to NOT being the middle child of seven for a few days. But she flipped her braid over her shoulder and sniffed, “Did you ask Ma and Da?”

Of course he had not. 

So we were delayed while he first ran to ask, and then ran to pack a satchel. 

Nettle sat down on the edge of our home boat, the Sunfish, to wait. I tucked our packs into the skiff and then sat down next to her, bumping her shoulder with my own. She muttered, “You are lucky to be an only child.” 

“Look at it this way, we have a ready-made excuse to be out longer now. We could miss the rest of drying and packing.” I gave her a bright smile before looking at the sky. “I don’t know, with a three crew couldn’t we sail over to the headlands and harvest some of the ripe yellow grass for arthritis too?”

She stared at me and then started giggling. 

When Thorn ran up with his satchel she favored him with a severe look and said, “We are going to harvest medicines, are you ready to work?”

He drew himself up straight and proud, but still under shoulder height. “Yes! Ma said I was to work hard and help lots!”

I started laughing, and Nettle rolled her eyes before going to sign out with the boat master and give him her itinerary. The iron clad rule is to always leave word of your direction. 

No one can search for you if they don’t know where to look.

We had to get well west along the archipelago. I asked Nettle about it once and she had shrugged. “Foxflowers need more water, and only really grow well in the shadow of the mountains.”

Not the Mountain of Bilbo’s adventure, nor the mountains of the Crossing. Our mountains were a sharp spine of islands at the edge of the world. The elders said that other lands lay over the water, but you would have to be well provisioned indeed to make the journey. I had always harbored a little secret little dream to go over the water and see these other continents for myself. 

Ah, but that is a different story.

We could easily hop from atoll to reef to island to reach our mountains. 

And with luck, miss the rest of drying and packing. Sold to the Big Folk of the mainland, the shadow fish harvest made us good coin and valuable trade goods. But I really hated packing the oily things. Honestly, I was happy apprenticed to Ma, learning to draw maps and keeping the logs. 

The island mountains were at the edge of the world. At this end of the loop, only a few days sail away by skiff. 

That night we pulled up on a small island and found enough driftwood on the beach to roast the fish Thorn aimed to catch. Watching Thorn dance around with line and hook, I decided to fish at the other end of the little bay and Nettle stomped off into the bushes. To be fair, she reappeared about an hour later with an entire basket of redfruit. With the fish I caught, dinner was tasty and a definite success in that we hadn’t needed to dip into our little food store. 

Despite Nettle’s sighs and eye rolling, Thorn did a good job.

The days that followed were similar, broken only by one day when we were surrounded by a pod of dolphins. They bumped the boat and cackled, actually putting their heads out of water to stare at us before swimming onward. Even Nettle thought they were funny.

It was midafternoon the next day and we were picking our way through a collection of reefs and shoals when Thorn said, “It looks wrong.”

“What?” Nettle and I looked into the water and at Thorn. 

His eyes were wide as he looked at the closest little island. The boat spun in the current and Nettle steadied the tiller. Even as we watched, the tide was dropping and we were being rapidly sucked away from shore. Before our eyes, the low tide mark passed and we could see fish flopping in the muddy puddles of the emptied cove. 

There was a ripping scrape as the skiff stranded on the coral reef, damaging both the bottom of the boat and the delicate yellow and blue coral. Nettle and Thorn leaned over the edges to stare at the water cascading away from us. It gurgled through the reef, carrying small fish and the little reef snails.

Memory rushed in as I stared at the water. My breath caught and I grabbed the edge of the boat, hanging on in terror. “We have to run. It’ll come back and we’ll be crushed.”

Nettle jerked her eyes away from the exposed ocean bed. “What?”

“Now! We have to get away, now!” But where could we run? We were stranded. 

My Ma once said, _“It’s a rare thing, but beware if the tide goes out at the wrong time of day. It always comes back in stronger and faster.”_ I threw open the equipment chest and started hauling out floats.

I threw a float at Nettle and grabbed Thorn babbling, “It’s the water, Ma said it’ll come back even faster and sweep away everything in its path.” 

Ma said, _“I’ve only seen it tiny, after an earthshake. But the old stories say they can be much larger.”_

There was a rumble and Nettle stood, staring north. She squeaked and sat abruptly. “It’s coming.” She grabbed a short rope and wrapped it around Thorn’s middle, hauling it tight and pinning the float to him. She grabbed his shoulders and snarled, “Hang on to the float. Like a big storm, understand?” Nettle shoved him down to cower in the bottom of the skiff as she rapidly knotted another rope, securing a float to herself.

She thrust a float at me as I fumbled through the chest for more rope. She tied it around me, and I gasped as she cinched it tight. She grabbed my shoulders, staring into my eyes. “Poppy, what do we do? Did Aunt Nem tell you how we escape?”

Ma said, _“You should always run away, get as high as possible up an island. Even climb trees. Or as far out into the water as you can because the waves are more like storm waves in the open Sea.”_

I gulped, the roar of water was too loud. “We hang on. Then we swim. When we get to shore we run uphill.”

Nettle grabbed me and yanked us all down into a heap, wedging us under the tiller seat. 

We lay there, wide eyed and gasping for long seconds before the wave hit. 

The water boomed into the side of the skiff and there was a crash as it rolled and the mast broke. Our screams were cut off as we went into the water sideways. I hung on but Thorn and Nettle were ripped out of my grip and I bounced along rocks before hitting the beach and being pushed into what I later decided would have been the bushes of the shore. 

I don’t know how I thought we ever could have swum. 

I was left lying at the base of a patch of scrubby trees as the water receded again. I gagged and threw up seawater before failing to sit up. Dazed, I looked around. Thorn and Nettle weren’t there. 

The water was at low tide again, and getting lower. 

I tried to get up but one leg wouldn’t work right. It didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t seem to make it tuck up under me to crawl to my feet. Dizzy, I collapsed face first onto the sand. The water receding like that was bad. 

Thorn rolled me over, forcing me to look into the too bright sky. He had a bloody nose and wiped at tears. “Poppy? I think we need to get up. The water is going to do it again.”

When I didn’t move, he grabbed me and started pulling, hauling me like a full trawl net with his heels dug into the sand. 

He got me a couple of feet and sobbed and said, “Poppy, you have to get up. We have to go find Nettle.”

So I tried, and somehow we got me up and staggering uphill. The next wave caught us at the knees and knocked us down, but Thorn pulled us both up and we kept going. The ground trembled and the sand sucked at our feet. At the top of the knoll, he stopped and we collapsed. 

We sat there as a bright and warm afternoon waned. I lay in a sick stupor, ears ringing and the world spinning, but Thorn cried. 

Sunset was a bright blaze of red and orange. 

The waves were dying, and the Sea resuming its old pattern. Thorn had been yelling for Nettle, but the only response had been the sound of the waves in their wrong pattern. 

Then, in the last light of day, Thorn sniffled and yelled again, “Nettle? Nettle, please.”

And Nettle yelled in the distance. “Thorn? Where are you?”

Her tears were hot as she hugged us, running gentle hands up and down Thorn and checking for missing parts before kneeling before me in the sand of the knoll. She frowned, “Poppy, did you know your foot is broken?”

I stared at my foot. “My head hurts too.” 

She smiled at the sour reply and hugged me again carefully. “I thought I’d lost both of you,” she whispered.

She tied my foot up, braced with whatever branches Thorn could find as the moon rose. And informed me, “If your head hasn’t killed you yet, I don’t suppose it will.” Then we just lay there in the dark. I could hear her crying that night as she lay between Thorn and me. But in the morning her eyes were dry as she looked across the horizon. 

“I got sucked out into the channel. I thought I would drown but then I got tossed onto shore around the point.” She smiled at Thorn, still sound asleep. “I climbed a nut tree and waited for the waves to stop.” Her voice was a whisper. “I found the skiff first. And I found your float.” 

Thorn yawned and curled up and she jerked her head up and turned away, wiping at her face.

I tried to sit up. My head still hurt and my neck ached to go along with my foot. But at least I wasn’t dizzy. “If we have the skiff-“

“We might be able to repair it to get home.” Nettle’s expression firmed. “We should hurry, I am worried about the home boats.”

I started laughing and Thorn woke up. 

In the end, it took a lot of time to repair the skiff well enough that it would float without slowly sinking. Thorn came up with the big discovery of the spare sail, still wrapped and tied, in the bottom of a tide pool. I don’t know how he spotted it in the murk of churned up sand and debris. I came up with the idea of using it as a kind of outer hull for our little skiff, to cover the rips and holes.

Nettle and I managed to get it tied into place around the center of the boat, then she spent several days painstakingly tying it better. It wasn’t a great job, but it would float. 

Mostly float, a certain amount of bailing would still be required. 

As I couldn’t help with any task that involved walking, I tended the fire and tried to rebuild equipment from the battered remnants Thorn scavenged along the reefs and beach. I even managed to carve and devise paddles that would work: without a mast or sail, the skiff wouldn’t actually “sail” anywhere. 

We set off over a week after the waves, slowly paddling away. 

Would it be anticlimactic to announce that Da and Nettle and Thorn’s parents met up with us at the next island over?

Nettle and Thorn had pulled the skiff up on the beach for more repairs and a chance to refill our water containers. I was attempting to get the line of our one recovered fishing pole into the water from a sitting position. 

They yelled and waved, turning into the shore and paddling up onto the beach. They beached their skiff up next to ours, jumping into the surf in their eagerness to reach us. 

Da laughed at me and untangled the my fishing hook again before sitting down next to me. He hugged me, careful of my scrapes and bound foot, and whispered, “We’ve been searching every bay and inlet along your route.” Nettle, Thorn and their parents seemed to be one giant group hug. We all cried before settling down to the routine of setting up camp. 

Da said, “The damage is much worse this way, I think the islands spared us a little.”

Uncle said, “But three of the home boats are stranded, we’ll need a lot of repairs before we sail on. I think the Dolphin we’ll have to salvage.” His grin was sudden, “It’ll be okay. No one died. And you are the last of the missing. The shadow fish harvest even mostly survived, so we’ll have some money for repair purchases.”

That night we sang around the campfire and went to bed early.

And in the morning we salvaged our little skiff, and sailed away home. 

A very long time later we would hear stories of a land called Numenor. A land of Big Folk who had rebelled or fought in a war or suffered a disaster. The stories all varied, but ended with their island collapsing under the waves, drowning all. 

Hearing the story I wondered how many others – Big Folk, Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves saw the great waves that day? How many ran? How many fought to survive? How many drowned?

We fought and won that day. Nettle, Thorn and I stayed together and lived.

We lived, and then went home to feast and laugh.

What? You don’t believe in hobbits with boats? Nettle would laugh. I don’t think she believes in hobbits who do not Wander.

But then, this is just a winter’s night story. A teller’s story; told and then vanishing with the wind at dawn. 

What did you learn?

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Hanukkah!


End file.
